Jonathan Vs. Buhari – When sitting on the fence is not an option

Nigeria has its way of pushing the citizens to a tight corner – deliberately. A way to force us to choose one out of two evils – Buhari vs. Jonathan is what we get, then a choice, we must make.

Today, it’s not that hard to get a sense of what Nigerians are thinking about these two guys, not hard to see who is doing most of the thinking when multitude blindly follow. A quick glance in the department of Thought Farts aka Twitter would give more than one has bargained for. One person tweets and hundred others retweet without reading the content, if they did, I doubt most of the messages would get a single retweet.

Some people might say we are making use of our labour force, maybe – get them busy with free recharge cards and Blackberry – Bless the Canadians!

Not much to say about Buhari. I know my people, often in time, Nigeria is perceived as a small village whereby the need of a small family unit is more important than that of a bigger community. Buhari is not the change we need and we all know that, he was there in Aso Rock once and far away from being our messiah.

So I asked the Thought Farts department what the deal about Mr Yemi Osibanjo, Buhari’s running mate was. I was not disappointed as a patriot responded as thus:

“He’s a smart lawyer and intellectual with a track record of implementing reform.”

The response was excellent only that it wasn’t good enough to satisfy my curiosity, but I guess with only 140 TF characters, you can only say so much. I do hope the specifics ‘reforms’ is made known to the public so we better get to know what he stands for.

Not much to say about GEJ either. Nigerians say incumbent presidents always win in Nigeria, I say, why can’t we start from GEJ if indeed we are tired of the same old that has not benefitted average person on the road.

Still have not much to say about GEJ but a leader who gave a lavish wedding to his daughter two weeks after#Bringbackourgirlshappened, is not worth my vote – all lives should matter. And yet today not only that the girls are still missing, many more lives regardless of gender have followed suit.

Our ex-president Obasanjodeserved everything GEJ said about him and much more. OBJ imposed him on us so no pity for the old man there, they both deserved each other. Nigerians regardless of the tribe would do well to ignore both GEJ and OBJ as they are distractors that no one deserved. It is boss boy and master case, they’d settle their differences in Switzerland over cocktails.

I must choose – Buhari it is. With Buhari we can start on a clean slate and enough of the praises, must work to deserve it this time.

12 replies

To vote for GEJ is madness, he is thoroughly incapable. Corruption and impotence are his trade marks. Buhari, is not perfect, but is altogether a more serious character. I believe he has been imprisoned (so he knows what it is to suffer) and during his term enacted many progressive reforms.
Obasanjo despite his myriad of faults, got Nigeria out of debt, Yar’Adua and GEJ have subsequently plunged the nation back into debt, to levels previously unknown. How this will be paid back is a mystery, $20 billion went missing, no one can account for it, need I say more about the GEJ administration?

Last month, US presidential candidate and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Jonathan and his government had squandered Nigeria’s oil wealth. “Nigeria has made bad choices, not hard choices,” Clinton said. “They have squandered their oil wealth; they have allowed corruption to fester, and now they are losing control of parts of their (own) territory because they would not make hard choices.”

Jonathan seems to care only about squelching the campaign of his opponent, a former military dictator, Muhammadu Buhari, who despite his brutal past, many see as a viable alternative to the current state of affairs.

Thank you so much for the link jco – Where to start? Everything in that article was true but this is Nigeria where realistically, most people are nobody and nothing that happens to them is a big deal. I believe Jonathan is only campaigning because it is all about the party never about the welfare of Nigerians. The guy is clearly is in a different planet, he doesn’t care and will never cared.

Interesting the writer compared Zuma and Jonathan in their attitude towards facing challenges. Well Zuma is not a saint and he has majority of SA people who would not let him rest reminding him of Nelson Mandela’s legacy, so he did well facing his critics head on rather than hiding from it.

GEJ is a different breed, not only does he not care, the guy is living (in his head) in a different planet. Him surrounding himself with clerics to me signalled not only cunning but a dangerous man – playing on the ignorance of the people. He knew very well Nigerians are crazy about religion so he plays the game…

And for Hillary Clinton remarks – God bless her. Am sure some other US PR are still on GEJ payroll to roll out positive news about him.

Even though the late Madiba (Nelson Mandela) is dead, he laid down a standard of leadership that future leaders of South Africa will be measured against. That is in part why South Africa (has not yet anyway) descended to the level that Nigeria currently occupies.
Nigeria never had a freedom fighter for president just crooked and or power-hungry generals and dubious politicans of questionable political credibility emerging from a swamp of corruption, so we should not be surprised that Nigeria is the way it is.
Encountering this blog, for me is a ray of hope in a very dark landscape. I wish Nigeria the best… in the coming months.

Very true with Nig never had a freedom fighter. Power hungry generals and all but I think one of the reasons they have succeeded up till now is playing tribal games so citizens were up against one another when in reality these generals were all in each others’ circle.

Now, things are a bit different thanks to WP and other social media, we can see that ordinary people in all of our regions suffer the same fate…

Thank you for the kind words, am glad you resonate with my posts, I believe millions of Nigeria would love to shout, only that their voice were too faint to be heard.

I am not surprised you have to choose BUHARI because of the narrowness of the choice option open to Nigerians!!! BUT APC IS A BROOM THAT SWEEPS THE SURFACE LEAVING THE UNDERNEATH VERY FILTHY ? Osibajo is another IJEBUS/EGBAS selfishness on Cenral power equation wrt YORUBA SOLIDARITY !!! HOWEVER THE UMBRELLA ONLY COVERS A FEW CHOSEN HEADS REALISTICALLY ? BUHARI is a Saint while the Hero of 12 2/3 is a VALIAN AND WE CAN STILL STAND ON JUNE 12. What a great Controversy with OSHIBAJO!!! YORUBA RONU???ANOTHER WHITE WASHED GRAVE!!!!!

The choices available to us are insane – And you are spot on regarding Osibanjo’s as an Ijebu man – and again this is Nigeria where we do things in turns and where a small group within larger group dominate.
I am open minded and believed if selection is based on merits, being an Ijebu man should not be a barrier – however, this area is probably hard to argue giving Nigeria already has a few performing governors most would have preferred.

If you have to choose, then choosing Buhari feels like choosing GEJ for me. Their pros & cons match each other snugly. I am firmly on the fence on this on because I haven’t been given a tenable choice. Every vote counts, you say? My civic duty, you remind me? I have the best possible answer any marginally enlightened Nigerian could give you. Has it ever mattered?

Maybe GEJ can ‘evolve’ but I struggle to see that, too much of Special Interest folks around him, and frankly, GEJ is not capable – anyone using religion – any religion to make any point in Nigeria can lead because we are better with multi faith.

Spot on re Buhari, he must earn our respect, with him I still cry for my beloved country and unless by miracle and hard work will he win.

OBJ said it once that Jesus would not win free and fair election in Nigeria, OBJ is one of the big time godfathers so no lie in that statement.

If you have a choice, an option of evil or less evil/acceptable, and nothing with a glimmer of hope in it’s hand, take the “devil” you know and beware. I still – shakily i admit – believe Goodluck will “evolve” into a moderately decent politician. Mr. Buhari, while a good and decent alternative, perhaps has ‘debts’ to pay with the people of nigeria as the ‘chips’ sitting it out (“sitting on the fence”) is definitely no option, nor is electing someone because he’s not the other guy. A pig in a poke is still a pig